Fighting Shadows

"Put this in any liquid thing you will,

And drink it off;

and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight".

-Romeo and Juliet Act V

It was a cold, rainy November morning when I first started drinking the poison.

It wasn’t so bad, not at first. I felt mostly normal. Two days later the poison visited its first pangs. I felt like death. How could I do this? How could I continue doing this? How would I function? Will it get worse? Better? Stay the same? Sweet, sweet poison that will kill that part of me that has rebelled and gone off on its own, determined to be itself. Hopefully enough of me will survive to carry out the judgment when the rebel has surrendered. I will show no mercy. I cannot.

When it is weak and vulnerable, I will come at it in the dark, with my bright lights blazing and my gleaming knives out sharp and ready, to cast it from me and declare that this territory is defended and will not accept the rebel, ever.

It is all I can do.

Now, I drink again.

-thoughts on Chemotherapy